One panel of this monument shows a Levantine king on his hands and knees before Shalmaneser III, his servants behind him carrying tribute. The caption names him as Jehu “of the house of Omri” — Assyrian shorthand for any king of Israel, even though Jehu had in fact wiped out Omri's line. It is the only surviving contemporary image connected with any king of Israel or Judah, made within Jehu's own lifetime.
- What it is
- Four-sided black limestone obelisk with relief panels and cuneiform captions
- Date of artifact
- c. 825 BC
- Discovered
- Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), Iraq, 1846 (Austen Henry Layard)
- Where it is now
- British Museum, London
- Related to
- King Jehu of Israel, shown bowing and paying tribute to Assyria
- Scripture
- 2 Kings 9–10
What this find showsJehu was a real king of Israel in the 840s BC and became a tribute-paying vassal of Assyria — a political humiliation the Bible itself never records.
What it does not proveThe kneeling figure may be Jehu's envoy rather than the king himself, and the scene says nothing about Jehu's bloody coup described in Kings.
Sources & further reading